Author: Jennifer P. Harris

Encouragement Pages- 07/12/2019

I want to talk to you about icebergs.

Everything that is easily visible is always seen at top of it. No one sees the width and depth of the ice, even close up.

The same thing goes with your WIP’s. No one sees how deep it all goes. No one sees the sleepless nights. The crippling self-doubt. The lack of support. The lack of time. The sacrifices of sleep, money and time you didn’t think you had! And most of all, the writing. The creating. The breaking through the walls, jumping the fences to complete the work.

No one sees the work. But they will always have something to say about what they see.

So, give them something to see.

With Love & Ink,

JBHarris

Encouragement Pages-07/10/2019

Failure.

Rejection letters.

Denials.

I know they hurt, and they seem so unfair, dear one. But I want to applaud you for your bravery in submitting. I want to tell you that I am proud of you for seeing a work all the way to the end! I want to tell you how proud I am of you for taking an idea in your head and putting it down. I want to commend your bravery in finding a site, a contest or a podcast to submit your work to! Most writers keep writing as a hobby because they fear other people looking at or judging their work.

That is a coin of the realm beloved. Rejection, critiques and criticisms come with the territory of submitting work–in any medium! You will have people that love your work and some whom will think you have no business writing the alphabet! But, there are people whom think still that women shouldn’t be writers. That think that Black people can’t/shouldn’t/don’t do horror. There are people that believe Laurel K. Hamilton shouldn’t have written the Anita Blake series. There are people that believe the 50 Shades of Grey series is horrible! There are people that believe Twilight is toliet paper!

There takes all writers, and all imaginations to make a world, dear ones.

Be part of that world.

Keep writing.

With Love & Ink,

JBHarris

Why You Need A Nome De Plume

I’m a fan of experimentation. I am a fan of writers finding their footing, however they can get it. This may mean you try more than one genre before you find a home. This may even mean that you have your wheelhouse genre, and a genre that you want to dabble in. With this dabbling as it were, you may feel the need to shift a little bit.

In that shifting, you may want to become someone else. This may be for professional reasons, or personal ones. The example I most often refer to is Anne Rice when she wrote The Sleeping Beauty trilogy. Her father, a devout Catholic, was still alive, and she didn’t him to judge her for the work. Or embarrass him. In writing under the name A.N. Roquelaire, she was able to write what she wanted, and preserve her perfessional integrity.

With Joanne K. Rowling, her publisher told her that in order to have more young men interested in Harry Potter she should change her name. So, JK Rowling she became and has stayed. The choice of a pen name is serious, dear ones. In the choosing of an alter ego, you are (in essence) becoming another person. You are writing as someone that is not totally you. That may be a little disarming. But it is up to you.

In choosing to write under a pen name, you are giving yourself a permission few people are granted. It is a power that few people get to possess and implement! As a writer, with a pen, name you can have your imagination broadened. You take the limits off what you consider your home genre to me. You can even bend genders (ie Mary Wollencraft Shelley and the Bronte Sisters).

Can you be a writer, and a successful writer, without a pen name? Of course you can! Not every writer even wants a pen name! But, its a tool. And every writer needs those. In having this as a tool, you can broaden your creative horizons. Every writer needs that.

Writing is a journey, and on the way to success and consistent footing, you are allowed to make adjustments. So if you are on your way to finding your footing and need another avenue for a way forward–consider becoming someone else. Maybe for a little while.

You won’t regret it.

Encouragement Pages-07/08/2019

There is no time like the present.

The enemy of any writer is always going to be time. It will always be time. That will be your consistent enemy–and asset. You have time if you make it. If you consistently choose to waste time, you won’t have it. Let me tell you, there is nothing so sorry and desperate as a stressed writer.

Ask me how I know…

But time, my dear oracles, scribes, writers and storytellers is on your side. Even if you have to steal it from other places.

With Love & Ink,

JBHarris

Encouragement Pages: 07/05/2019

There is a power in picking up a work that you believed was trash.

The power of re-examining your work threw a lens of the power of your own talent is incredible. You have to be bold enough to look at what you have, in its raw form, and see what you want.

The power of constructing a work is seeing what you want. Even in the mess of a draft you may have no hope for.

Dust it off. Get back to it.

In Love & Ink,

JBHarris

Encouragement Pages: 07/03/2019

Don’t throw the draft away because it’s hard!

Keep at it!

This is the hardest thing to do sometimes, especially when it feels that you cannot find *The Flow.

But think of inspiration at the weather patterns. Some conditions have to be right or change for optimal weather–or for it to change. However, while waiting for sun, you have to wait out the rain.

This means research. This means freewrite. This means remember that you can start this work and come back to it. You can start something new! But don’t quit. Wait out the rain. Get your umbrella.

Matter of fact, jump in the puddles.

Enjoy the journey.

With Love & Ink,

JBHarris

Note: The Flow is this concept that I’ll discuss on the YouTube channel. For now, just know that The Flow is what every writer chases.

Who Are You–Now?

I am a fan of comics and secret identities. With the success of the MCU, it is not a new thing to think about or discuss who a superhero is sans a supersuit, webshooters or the ability to fly.

A pen name allows you as a writer, to create your own superpower.

Anne Rice was once A.N. Roqualaire.

Stephen King is also Richard Bachmann.

Nora Roberts is also J.D. Robb.

There is no shame in wanting to explore genre or talent. There is no need to shame someone that writes under a pen name anyway! It gives you the ability to walk through the world as someone other than yourself. The coolest part this? No one ever has to know.

Your pen name should be significant to you. Just like any good superhero, it’s your uniform of sorts. It should be for a specific purpose, even if you plan to write as this person for a single project! You have that freedom as well.

Writers are masters ate bending reality to our whims and will. Being able to write, to create as another person? That indeed is a superpower. The question is, who will you become?